


Dating for Dummies

by hopeassassin



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: AU, Amusement Park, Cute, Dating, F/M, Fluff, Pointless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 10:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeassassin/pseuds/hopeassassin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s only—<i>already</i>—their second date. He ought to choose carefully where he wants to take her if he is to impress her.</p><p>So how in the <i>world</i> did he end up taking her to a damn amusement park?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dating for Dummies

**Author's Note:**

> AU, where Daiki and Satsuki did not grow up together, and where they meet when they're 20-something years old.

The time they agreed on for their second date was the next day. Since he was at work till evening and Satsuki had to drop off her data by the company, they decided to go after she was done with the delivery.

 

At the set hour, she arrived perfectly on time, finding to her surprise that he was already there, waiting for her.

 

“So where are we going?” Satsuki queried merrily, gaze pinned to his handsome profile.

 

He held her gaze with a little smile of his own as he led her towards the nearby station.

 

“You’ll see when we get there,” he promised with a suspicious smirk. If she wasn’t completely engulfed in trepidation, she may have found his expression alarming.

 

‘There’, as it turned out, was a traveling amusement park famous all throughout the country, which was staying in their town for a week.

 

She turned slowly to stare at him with her mouth agape, and when it took her longer than he was comfortable with for a reaction, he put a hand behind his head, rubbing the base of his neck nervously.

 

“Err, _well_ , you said you were having some stressful days lately, so I thought that maybe we should do something for _fun_ ,… you know?”

 

By the time he was done explaining, if his voice had been a corporeal thing, it would’ve shrunk to the size of a mouse.

 

But a moment later, Satsuki’s expression bloomed into the most brilliant ear-splitting grin. She threw her arms around Daiki, pressing herself into him as she thanked him a thousand times before running straight into the park without paying any heed to the clerk calling out to her that she needed to pay an entrance fee first.

 

The tall dark-skinned man shook his head to himself at her antics, taking out his wallet to pay the entry fees for both of them before the clerk could pop a vein from fury or worse.

 

The subsequent hour and a half was the most pure, innocent fun he’d had in years. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he had been at an amusement park, but regardless how old one got, there were certain things one didn’t simply tire of.

 

Like, for example, the bumping cars. He may have overgrown the comfort the seat provided, but most certainly not the entertainment value of the ride. He took great pleasure in chasing after her on the ring, and being rather impressed with her skill at evading his head-on attacks.

 

Thrill rides were more to his taste, though, so he insisted that they go there, despite the greenish colour her face adopted when he motioned towards it. Still, she plastered a smile to her face as she joined him in riding on the roller coaster.

 

And, boy, could that woman _scream_ —he discovered to his endless amusement.

 

They spent some time sitting at a bench in the park as she tried to get herself together from that experience. She didn’t seem too thrilled with his inability to stop laughing at her misery, so he decided to redeem himself by distracting her with a tamer ride.

 

He showed her to some swings, whose seats were held by chains. Obviously, it was a spinning kind of ride, and it looked like fun. She let him talk her into trying it out.

 

When the machine whirred to life after all passengers had been safely strapped in, it started out pretty excitingly. It started swinging them around and around, making the chilly late afternoon breeze caress her skin pleasantly.

 

But then it picked up speed, and she ended up clinging to the chains of the swing while her stomach jumped up in her throat.

 

“Dai-chan, you bully,” she whined out as she clung to the nearest bench again. “You tricked me! That wasn’t any better than the roller coaster!”

 

She pouted cutely at him while he gave her his most unconvincing apology ever. When she continued to sulk, he chuckled to himself and went to buy her some snacks from the nearby booth.

 

Satsuki glared at the cotton candy he was handing to her.

 

“Don’t think you can buy me off so easily!” she said with a petulant huff, crossing her arms over her chest.

 

“Hmm, I see—you don’t want it, then? That’s too bad—I guess I’ll have to eat it myself,” Daiki said nonchalantly, sitting down next to her.

 

It took her only several seconds of conflicted deliberation with herself before she cleared her throat out pointedly.

 

“W-well, since you bought it for me anyway, I guess it would be rude to say no!”

 

While he watched her greedily gobble up the fluffy candy, it occurred to him that this probably wasn’t his best idea for a dating site.

 

After all, being in this kind of place made them both regress back to a time when they were a bit more carefree, and made them both feel like children. Was that really what he was going for?

 

Yet all those doubts fluttered away on their own when she turned to talk to him animatedly, cotton candy stuck to her nose. He tapped his nose in indication she had something to her face, and the bright red her cheeks flushed in embarrassment at the realization before she turned away from him to rub it away was priceless enough to make him believe that there was no reason to rush into things.

 

So what if they spent some time being juvenile? Even though it was their second date— _already_ , and _still just_ the second date—he honestly couldn’t bring himself to begrudge his choice in bringing her there that day.

 

Especially when she laughed so earnestly when she saw how her reflection got twisted in the house of mirrors.

 

“Now that I think about it, this is the first time I’ve seen you laugh so much, Dai-chan,” she observed after they came out from the spinning teacups.

 

The teacups which, by the way, she had somehow ended up getting conned into trying, despite having promised herself not to ride on any spinning stuff anymore that day.

 

Daiki looked up from the soft drink he had bought himself from the nearby vending machine. His brows shot up in surprise.

 

“Don’t look so shocked,” she said with a giggle that wasn’t unlike the ringing of a dozen bells. “You’re always so serious, or impassive, or scowling.” She seemed to remember something, and she smiled coyly in reaction to it. “When you’re not being all suave and smooth-talking, that is.”

 

He couldn’t help the playful grin that elicited from him then. It caused her smile to widen.

 

“But you don’t really laugh all that often. So getting to see you here, all carefree smiles and child-like laughter is… really refreshing.”

 

She realized what an embarrassing confession she’d made before he did, and she turned her face away from him as she trudged on in the direction of the refreshment stands. She ordered herself a fresh while doing her best to keep the stutter out of her voice.

 

Daiki watched her back closely, trying to reconcile this innocent almost to a fault girl with the voluptuous vixen that had pretty much stalked him.

 

She was truly such a mind-boggling character, he couldn’t get enough of all the facets there were to her.

 

He fell in stride with her, taking her hand as he led her away.

 

“I know what will wipe those grins off of both our faces,” he said with a smirk, pointing towards the haunted house attraction.

 

Satsuki ended up swallowing a much bigger gulp of her juice than she had initially intended.

 

“You really do enjoy doing this to me, don’t you?” she deadpanned, a sigh of defeat tearing from her chest at the mischievous smirk he kept giving her.

 

* * *

 

Regardless of how adequate a choice the amusement park had been for a fascination still in the making, Daiki was glad that she enjoyed her time that evening.

 

So when he walked her to her apartment complex afterwards, he did so without regrets.

 

“Do you want to come up? I can offer you a drink or some coffee, if you like,” she said pleasantly, clasping her hands behind her body.

 

Well, _almost_ without regrets.

 

He really, _really_ wanted to go up to her apartment.

 

The potential of him going home next morning the earliest was quite high, he was certain. And he wanted to seize that potential and make it reality.

 

Yet the mood wasn’t quite right. Thus emerged the double-edged sword of the amusement park as a date site.

 

But, rather than that, he couldn’t ignore the fact he could practically feel the exhaustion radiating off of her in waves. She was doing her best to shove it aside, and the exhilaration from all the fun they’d had on their play date was definitely helping her in doing that. But…

 

He smiled tenderly at her, putting a hand on her head in a somewhat patronizing manner.

 

“I think I should take a rain check on that offer,” Daiki told her, and he could believe himself almost as little as she could in that moment.

 

‘ _What the hell am I doing?!_ ’

 

‘ _What the hell is he saying?!_ ’

 

The thoughts shot through their minds at almost the same time. Daiki shook his head to rid it of all the self-deprecating comments his inner self started to rain upon him.

 

“What?” she all but whined out, dragging out the single syllable.

 

“You pulled almost two all-nighters in a row. You need to sleep.” He peered closely into her face, and the intensity of his scrutiny made Satsuki shrink back a little in self-consciousness. “And even if you did your best to hide it with makeup, I can still see the circles under your eyes when you laugh like that.”

 

She gave him a guilty grin, before she realized that now that he had brought her attention back to it, she could barely suppress a tired yawn behind her hand. He chuckled as he retracted his hand from her hair.

 

“I guess you’re right,” she relented at length, shrugging lightly.

 

Of course he was right. He was being particularly nice and considerate of her with this. It was an act almost borderline gentlemanly.

 

But despite this being the right thing, he couldn’t help wanting to kick himself for it.

 

He wanted to get his hands on her so badly his fingers were practically itching. He hadn’t stopped thinking of her since their last date at the restaurant.

 

Yet, at the same time, he wanted to be sure she would be able to enjoy the things he had in mind for her—and not just simply _be there_ for them.

 

His very real fear of her passing out sound asleep in a sublime moment notwithstanding.

 

Being around her in that moment only aggravated further his already conflicting enough emotions. So he waved his farewells to her as he made a pivot on his heel, ready to leave for the station.

 

“Dai-chan!” she called after him from the main entrance of the apartment complex. He half-turned in a demonstration that he was listening. “Dai-chan, you really are the best!”

 

A wide, self-content smile spread on his face as her words registered with him.

 

“Oh? I thought I was a bully,” he said easily, reminding her of her earlier jabs his way.

 

Instead of flustering cutely, like he expected her in vein of her overall naively innocent behaviour all day, Satsuki merely reciprocated the impishness of his expression.

 

“Who said they were mutually exclusive?” she asked rhetorically. She gave him a playful wink before disappearing behind the door as she let herself into the building.

 

Around the time he was reaching the subway station, his phone vibrated with a new message received. He felt the smirk already tugging on the corners of his mouth before he even opened the text.

 

‘ _Good night, Dai-chan! ^.^_ ’ glowed at him from the screen bellow.

 

‘ _Sleep tight, Satsuki_ ,’ he wished her, fully intending to follow his own advice. 

**Author's Note:**

> If this seems pointless and disjointed, it's because it's a chunk out of something else I'm writing. :D
> 
> It was deterring the proper flow of the story, so I decided to take it out. But I'm kind of proud with how it came out, so I couldn't very well just delete it, so - here you go. xD As a stand alone. :D


End file.
